free association

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A spontaneous, logically unconstrained and undirected association of ideas, emotions, and feelings.

n. A psychoanalytic technique in which a patient's articulation of free associations is encouraged in order to reveal unconscious thoughts and emotions, such as traumatic experiences that have been repressed.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The act or process of free-associating. It is a technique used in psychoanalysis and is supposed to allow the analyst access to the unconscious thoughts of the analysand. See free-associate.